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Shield Combinations (Vagrant Story)
Because there is only a Circle Shield in the first playthrough, and has a higher priority than when combining shields, you must wait until the second playthrough to obtain a shield higher than Circle, let alone Hoplite or Jazeraint or Dread. This does not stop the player making some fancy shields for a challenge. Shield Combinations are very similar to Armor Combinations, except because there are not multiple types as with the different Body Locations of armor, there are no transformations of type. Where there is much transformation and irregularity, however, is in Material. Shields more than any other combination type can yield or from base materials, or can combine base materials with and . in the first slot and in the second always yields a shield. Until the second playthrough, this combination has to be done in the Magic Hammer or Junction Point workshops, and the following + combination must be done at Metal Works in Town Center East. The usual consecutive-tier combinations are helpful, with same-tier combinations occurring with the last and penultimate combinations, as with Armor and most weapons. However, there are multiple combinations between the fifth Tier (Circle) through eighth Tier (Round). Strategies Sit and get Hit, Enchanting, Devolve, and Trash Collecting. Sit and get Hit is self-explanatory: find a weak enemy and get hit enough times to raise affinity. Healing can raise Light affinity, and also lower Dark, so you may even wish to take off armor to heal and then quickly replace it. A very useful enemy is the Dark Eye at Sinner's Corner. Enchanting uses Enchanter spells to add bonuses (slowly but controllably) to armor including shields, and can also be used on weapons. Warlock spells will not raise affinity on shields as they do on Armor. Devolve uses Mismatch to turn those valuable Affinity and Class bonuses into a shield that always gives Equal Combines (all high). Therefore, they can be combined with any other Design, and because the highest Affinity or Class bonus is always retained in a Combine, the desired Shield Design can now have those bonuses. Trash Collecting follows the principle that every shield always has some Affinity and Class on it; every one of them that can be Combined saves a considerable amount of time gathering higher level shields or Sit and be Hit. The problem is integrating all of the shields into one, and the simplest means is, again, to Devolve them all. The weakness of this plan is that the time taken to Combine all of the junk shields could have been spent on getting good ones, and the same weakness as any plan to Combine large amounts of items to gain Affinity and Class: that the 80% rate, such that two bonuses of 10 add up to 16 instead of 20, means it is an awfully long way to 100 that way. Better to use Combine to get rid of Trash, rather than collecting it, to roughly half or some other fraction of the way, and then Sit and be Hit or Enchanting, because those methods do not get diminishing returns. There are a lot of weapon and armor combinations that can mix baser metals with Damascus or even other baser metals to get Damascus, but even more so with Shields, so check out the guides linked at the bottom of the page to find those. The results of Combinations of the sixteen types of Shields with each other are shown here. A combination of a particular Shield Design with one of the same type always results in that same weapon, although the Affinities and Classes are combined. For more on the effect of combinations on Affinities and Classes, see Combine in Vagrant Story. Combination Analysis and Table Key Generally speaking, it can be observed that shields belong to tiers, ranging from least powerful to most powerful. * Shields in adjacent (consecutive) tiers, will combine the best, creating a weapon of the same type but the next higher tier. * A shield in a lower tier will often 'devolve' the higher shield to a lower tier. This is called Mismatch in these guides and can be useful if the product is rare (see the Combine section). In general, Shields follow the tendency that the greater the difference between the Tiers, the lower the product * Shields have no Design, or no Tiers, depending on how you look at it. There is less variation from the other guides and processes if the different levels are considered Tiers so they are called that in this guide. * Progression: Same-Design combinations of consecutive Tiers that combine to make the next higher consecutive Tier of that same Design. These are usually marked with + * + Shows combinations that are the most superior. * Sometimes there are two different products of the same ingredients, depending on which order the ingredients are added. The first product listed is always the combination with the first ingredient from the left, vertical column of ingredients. * - Mismatch; there tends to be a much heavier penalty on combinations that are close together but not consecutive, than there is for combining a very low shield with a high one. * = Equal Combinations potentially improve the Class and Affinities of shields without changing their Tier. Tiers 1-8 with same Tiers 1-8 with Tiers 8-16 Mostly Mismatches, other than Kite with either Spiked or Round, and Casserole with Round Tiers 8-16 with same See Also * Armor * Weapons Citations External Links * Links to a wide range of Vagrant Story Articles -Gamefaqs * Combinations Guide J Tilton Category:Armor Category:Game Mechanics Category:Guides Category:Lists Category:Workshop Category:Lists of Combinations